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For the first time this year, I bring you Can I Eat This, a catalogue of almost entirely revolting, occasionally reassuring, oftentimes hilarious questions regarding food safety, from the users of Ask Metafilter. The following are quotes from actual user’s questions.

the car is not a refrigerator
– The other day I bought a package of a popular brand of vegetarian breakfast link ‘sausage.’ I bought it in the late morning and I forgot it in the cab of my truck for about seven hours on a day that saw temperatures reach the mid-60s.”
– “I got a fully cooked ham from my employer, put it out in my car trunk during the day, and forgot about it when I got home. Over the next few days, I didn’t remember it at all.”

suspect fish and shellfish
– “Aw crap, I left some salmon out overnight. Is it still safe to eat?” (Elsa’s note: it’s worth directing you to this response, too, if only for a rare example of justified use of the usually grating and unnecessary blink tag.)
– “Should I eat it filter: Can of Bumblebee whole baby clams. Dumped them into my chowder only to notice that they looked a bit green.”
– “Bought a bag of frozen shrimp (cooked, tails on) on Saturday night. Husband defrosted about half of it by running it under water, then changed his mind and cooked something else for dinner. Shrimp has been in the refrigerator since (in sealed tupperware). Is it still OK to eat? Will it be OK tomorrow (i.e. 3 days since defrosting)? How about Wednesday?”
– “I boiled about a half cup of quinoa with powdered vegetable broth yesterday at lunch time, then mixed in a can of tuna and two cans of salmon… Mixture was left unrefrigerated for ~20 hours… So, can I eat it?”

warm mayo
– “I bought a sandwich from a deli 14 hours ago (ham salami cheese and mayo) and left it out unrefrigerated. Can I still eat it and not get sick?”

cat litter, mmm
– “Let me be clear here: I have no intention of actually eating cat litter. But! We recently switched to the laboriously named Swheat Scoop-brand cat litter (which works quite well), which appears to be made of nothing but dried, cracked wheat.
Could I, say, cook this stuff up in some hot milk or water, add a little butter and brown sugar, and enjoy a piping hot kitty-litter breakfast? If not, why not?”

poison mushroom? no — poison ivy!
– “One of my favorites. Chicken of the woods. It has both the taste and texture of chicken. On the way home I spotted it on the side of the road. I told my wife and then after her night class, she stopped and harvested it. When she brought it in I noticed bits of poison ivy poking out of it. Mostly stems but also a few leaves and berries. I’m sure this was poison ivy.”

Once again, it’s time to visit the odd, unofficial category of questions that forms my favorite subset of the Ask Metafilter archives. Yes, it’s the “Can I eat this?” category! (Previously on macbebekin.) In this round, we see such subjects as:

cheese, a perennial favorite in Can I eat this? territory
– “[T]his particular block of Swiss cheese… has been in my fridge for 2 years. Yes, 2 years. It was a joke that’s not funny anymore. Anyways, is the cheese safe to eat? The visible discoloration is worrisome.” Mmmmm, worrisome!
– “I left my blue cheese in the fridge for a month – will eating it kill me? It’s moldy already, right?”
– “… a mozzarella block, loosely wrapped in plastic with an exposed end, a block of parmesean (same wrap situation), and a tub of fresh mozzarella in olivine. It was left out for approxamately 20 hours. Is any of it recoverable for tonight’s pizza?”

poultry
– “Can severely freezer-burned chicken be ‘rescued’?”
– “How long can chicken be frozen and remain good (as in not dangerous) to eat?”
– “So I know you aren’t supposed to brine a butterball turkey, but I’ve already bought the turkey and all the brining stuff, what’s the worst that can happen?”
– “Has my turkey expired? Should i not deep fry this bird?”
– “Would it still be safe to make a soup today from Christmas turkey leftovers?” It boggles me how many people think suspect leftovers are rendered safe in a soup, as if boiling the hell out of spoiled meat destroys the toxins. PSA: It does not. Typically, the toxins in spoiled food are a by-product of bacteria, and not vulnerable (as bacteria is) to heat.
– Happily, the responders to this question knew that. The poster describes how he made a pot of chicken stock on Monday, then “forgot about it. Yesterday (tuesday) came and went, and it is still sitting on the stove. Today is Wednesday. If I boil it again for a bit of time, will it be ok to eat?” The overwhelming response? Oh my sweet lord, no, and one poster kindly linked to the wikipedia entry on heat-stable enterotoxins, which survive up to 100 degrees Celsius.

smelly pork
– “Bad pork or just a bad smell? Opening the bag, the pork smells horrible, sorta like rotten eggs. Rinsing it off reduced but did not eliminate the smell.”

fat
– “For how long does fatty pig skin stay good in the fridge?”
– “How long will an opened tin of goose fat last in my fridge, assuming that I cover it with cling film and treat it with the respect that it so richly deserves?”

sauces and savories
– “How does pesto go bad? Will it silently kill me?… Will I just get some gas? Hallucinations? Or should I put on my coat and start walking to the mortuary while I can still get there on my own?”
– “[T]he label on the olive salad recommended that the jars be kept refrigerated even before opening them. [But] I didn’t have a refrigerator in my hotel room for my 7 day stay in Vegas.”
– “BotulismFilter: Should I eat this? I put some sun dried tomatoes in a jar and covered them with olive oil… My friends suggested that it might be a bad idea to eat them because they’ve been sitting in a jar in my pantry for six months. I think that the olive oil makes them safe. Somehow.”

A bonus Can I eat this? question! (Okay, more accurately, it’s a What the hell did I eat? question, but let’s not quibble.) The case of the boozy backpack quinoa has lurked queasily in my mind since I read it back in February.

… [I] discover the container of food in my backpack, where it’s been sitting for a couple of days in a fairly warm environment. I chow it all down, noting that it tastes – and smells – funky. Sour, bitter, but not altogether bad. Additionally, the zucchini slices look and taste more like pickle slices.
It’s 30 minutes later now, and I swear to God I have a little bit of a buzz on.

[note: Ask Metafilter’s Can I eat this? questions deserved their own tag, so here it is.]

The hive mind at Ask Metafilter draws on a pool of 60,000 members to answer questions on any topic: romantic, technical, medical, cultural. But perhaps the most entertaining discourse, second only to Steve, Don’t Eat It!, occurs in the wake of the question “Is this safe to eat?” Here I present a compilation of food safety questions from AskMe. Goggle in amazement as people take chances with:

poultry
– “… today I learned that you’re very much not supposed to store raw veg & raw chicken together in the fridge overnight, and now I know better than to do it again. But…”
– “ XMAS DINNER: Is it safe to eat these leftovers?” [I would totally eat these, and very recently did eat turkey & stuffing similarly mistreated.]
– “Pizza [topped with chicken] purchased hot on Wednesday night and kept in the fridge till Friday….Good to eat?”
– “Should I eat this cooked chicken in my fridge? 6-7 days old, and in a zip-loc.”
– “I left a [chicken patty with mayo] sandwich in my car this morning, unfortunately on the back deck (sedan).”

fish and shellfish!
– “I made a tuna sandwich for lunch and left it at home [on the counter]. Will it still be edible?”
– “How long is it safe to keep cooked shrimp in a refrigerator before eating?”
– “Erm, I just ate raw swordfish… Am I gonna die?”
– “I just found some frozen scallops in the back of my refrigerator, and I imagine they have been there for about two years.”

preserved pork
– “Is it OK to eat raw pancetta? It tasted good, but it was very, very chewy, so chewy that I ended up having an unchewable lump of fat in my mouth that I had to spit out.”

potential botulinum carriers
– “Would homemade mango chutney which was placed in a strawberry jam jar as soon as it was made and hasn’t been opened since (as far as I know) still be OK to eat after one year in a pantry cupboard at room temperature?”
– “Why did my hummus explode?” After being advised that exploding hummus may well indicate botulism, which produces no off smell or taste and can easily be deadly or debilitating, the original poster adds “It totally smells fine. I have yet to decide about eating it.”

And finally, my two favorites. One, a simple question seeking an inventive answer:
– “Can I eat a live wasp? If so, what would the safest method of eating it?”

Second, a long dramatic arc detailing the struggle between financial prudence and every other kind of prudence:
– “But hey, this is expensive crab meat.”

In a recent Ask Metafilter question about undrinkably bitter lemonade, I gave a few quick tips on keeping the tart, zingy flavor from the lemon zest without extracting the pith’s bitterness, and some quick instruction on making infused simple syrup.

The admins labeled my comment as “perfect lemonade recipe,” but it’s not a proper recipe with measurements and proportions, just a few hints for tarting up your favorite lemonade. Here’s the proper recipe, along with a recipe for ginger iced tea, and a few hints for cooling summer drinks:

Help me understand the power dynamics in play when two men pass each other on the sidewalk.
Over the last few years I’ve started to get an inkling that there’s a whole separate silent conversation happening between men on the street that I, as a woman, am not really ever aware of. How they make eye contact, how much space they allow for each other to pass, who moves aside, etc. When someone bumps me with their arm I assume it’s accidental; I’m starting to think such things between men are not always so (at least if the number of almost-fistfights my ex got into are any indication).

I realize much of this probably happens on an unconscious level, but I’d love to hear any explanations or rules anyone can lay out, and whether this is a constant thing or contextual.

The ensuing discussion is fascinating and in some places contentious.

Anyone can read Ask Metafilter, and if you pay the $5 cover, you can join, ask one question each week, and give advice all the live-long day.